Beyond the Roundels

I picked this up somewhere and thought it might be fun to do an old-style meme (although I think this was probably designed as a tumblr ask thing, but hey: there are still no meme police!) and have a reason to talk about fannish things, which is, after all, why I'm here.


(I did the first four together, because they're quite similar and predictable answers are predictable.)

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?

Doctor Who! I first watched it in 1988 (last ten minutes of The Happiness Patrol, my mind was both deepened and boggled and love for Seven was instantaneous), I bought Doctor Who Magazine from about 91 or 92, I thought up fanfic in my head, and then in 1995 I went to university and there they had the internet and newsnet and I discovered rec.arts.drwho, and, more importantly, alt.drwho.creative, and though I had a big internet/fandom gap again afterwards, that was it, really. I came back to finish a historical fic with Four, Sarah, and Harry I'd started in 1998 before the Internet famine, but having returned to post it in 2007, I discovered the Teaspoon and LJ, and I was in love, basically.


2. What is your latest fandom?

A difficult question. In the sense this meme probably means, as in a fandom where I'm really involved in lots of things, probably still Doctor Who, but I like writing for anything that takes my fancy. It usually is old TV things that I've been watching, but I can't seem to help that. (I think it takes the pressure off to write for things where you're not writing something ten other people have already done, which just seems pointless).

But it is lonely and I should probably try harder at modern fandoms; it just never seems to work out. I'm too far behind when I watch them, or I can't ship just one thing and everybody else is all lined up in shipping teams on tumblr, writing fluff.

The last new thing I wrote for is When the Boat Comes In, but I don't think I'd say I was in the fandom, even if there was one. I just wanted to write a thing, and so I did.


3. What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

Doctor Who, but I have also had a lot of fun in Blake's 7 and Sapphire and Steel. Most of my other fandoms are either too small or too big to work like that and so I'm not properly in them.

It also doesn't help that I can't really tumblr properly. I have a tumblr and I have fun there sometimes and have met a handful of very nice people, and it does some things very well, but I really preferred the varying levels of choice and filtering journalling and comms gave me, compared to newsgroups, forums, chatrooms, and now tumblr, which despite some filtering here and there are rather all-or-nothing in terms of public or private, which I've always found off-putting.


4. Do you regret getting involved in any fandoms?

Since, in my case, this mostly means "I wrote a thing for it one time", then, no, I don't. And of the fandoms I've properly been in, that's mainly the three above and I certainly couldn't regret being in them, not even the worst corners of DW fandom that I've spent 20 years hiding from. I've made friends, read and written fic, and learned new things from them all.

( Full list of questions under the cut )

Apologies for the spammage, but a friending meme for all those who like female characters of any kind (and making friends):



If you would prefer to go Dreamwidth side, check out the post at halfamoon.

I seem to be back for the moment, so that's a relief! For everyone, I'm sure, after all my complaining. Now I shall just be slowly catching up again...

Thanks especially to people who took pity on me and came over to Dreamwidth to talk to me!

Now I can go back to pestering you with tales of old TV as usual. ♥

LJ hasn't loaded for me all day, and now I'm fed up and very lonely and bored. With LJ, I have stuff to do and people to talk to. Without it? The internet is all but pointless, and I can't talk to anyone. I can amuse myself for about ten minutes or so and then I need to go away and sigh again and maybe dust something or lie down.

In the meantime, since LJ is apparently working for everybody else in the world except me, this should crosspost so you know why I'm ignoring you until LJ lets me back in. (It came back very briefly twice during the day, so I'm hopeful it will. But I can't report anything because I can't get in to report it.)

:-(


I am now going off to make sugarless scones (it's a thing I do), and try not to panic about it. I have a book. It doesn't seem to be giving me too much of a headache yet, so hey. There's that, I suppose. And I can write a bit maybe if I don't get too depressed about having nowhere to post it ever again. Luckily, my family phoned for five minutes just now before I died of isolation. (Can you do that in only one day? Probably not.)

Also also the doctor's mislabelled my blood test on Thursday and I have to go and give them some more on Monday. (I can't complain; they've never done anything like this before. But i would rather not have my two big outings for the week both being things where people stick needles in me.)


(I may be feeling sorry for myself now. This is what happens when people cruelly take LJ away from me.)

... to the wonderful liadtbunny! I do hope you're having an excellent day, with all the gloomy old 70s telly you could possibly wish for. ♥


Also, in another note, there's a blog out there where the user has been reposting LJ posts without permission. (They seem to have set it up in some automated way to repost any posts tagged with "fanfic" or variations, or entries from selected blogs, possibly, but it includes anything tagged with that - random meme posts, challenge announcement and in one case, someone complaining about the blog stealing their posts, so they obviously don't bother looking at their own content.)

It's here

I've requested that my posts be removed. (They seemed to have taken all my entries tagged fanfic since July, regardless of fandom.)

I noticed (when going through the "fanfic" tag) entries stolen from john_amend_all, liadtbunny (happy birthday! your fic has been stolen!), kaffyr, and also still_lycoris, who isn't on my flist, but I know some of you know.

I'm actually a lot less bothered than I probably should be about people stealing my fic, but I do very much object to someone reposting my LJ entries wholesale, and I may need to make a lot more things flocked for a while, because if it's possible to set up something like that for one tag, who knows who else is doing it for whatever kind of topic? Clearly a public entry really needs to be something I don't mind being more public than I'd planned on.

(I'm posting this publicly and tagging it "fanfic" though, because if the blog ends up with a whole lot of posts warning the world against itself, it serves the blogger right. You know, can we go back in time and prevent the invention of Tumblr or something? Not everything is made to be reblogged and context is a thing that exists, even on the internet.)

Is anyone else having problems leaving comments in some people's LJs but not in others (again)? I was assuming it was LJ rather than specifically me, because they did say something in maintenance about it possibly happening again in spots, but haven't seen anyone else complaining. And it's a different mix of journals today rather than yesterday...

:-/

okay LJ, why have you just vanished half my flist entries? I don't like that at all. Bring them back at once!

(Is it just me? What is going on? 0_o)

ETA: One thing just came back now. *baffled*